The Piano

Today we said farewell to the piano that has been in the Cummer family for a hundred years. Known generally as "Auntie Ada's piano," after my great-aunt who provided the accompaniment for the song sessions in the parlour of the home in Calgary, I refer to it as "Uncle Roy's piano."

Ada's younger brother, Royden (Roy) Van Horne Cummer was a decorated war hero. Those are the Belgian Croix de Guerre and the French Croix de Guerre among his First World War mementos. But that’s a story for another day.

Like his older brother Jack and his younger brother Harold, Roy volunteered for military service in the First World War. Jack went overseas with Lord Strathcona’s Horse and wound up in Palestine with the British Imperial Army. Harold fought on the Western Front as an artilleryman. Corporal Roy Cummer served as a dispatch rider in the Yukon Company of the Canadian Motor Machine Gun Service.

In 1918 during the final push towards Germany, he was blown off his motorcycle by an artillery shell. He regained consciousness in a military hospital, and they patched him up and sent him back home to Calgary where resumed old friendships and favourite pastimes, including excursions to the Rocky Mountains.

Attire and equipment for hiking the Rockies was different back in 1921 — that’s Roy bringing up the rear.

But as today, after a grueling hike there was always the promised relaxation of the Cave and Basin hot springs. The back of the photo entitles the picture “The Water Babies” and gives the date August 7/21.

Roy took up a job at the post office. He had a technique of laying the letters out along his left arm so he could see all their addresses as he sorted them out to their appropriate slot.

Those were halcyon days, but Roy was unaware he had a ticking time bomb in his body. Shrapnel from his war wound was slowly moving through his system until it reached his brain. He collapsed at work, they brought him home, but he never regained consciousness. On September 22, 1921, aged 28, he died.

family ca 1913. front row: wilda, fred w., carl, ada; back row: jack harold, roy

With the proceeds of a life insurance policy, the family purchased the piano.

It was an upright grand, built in Montreal by Willis and Company. In Calgary, it had pride of place in the parlour of the family home on 13th Avenue SW, and was later moved to our home on 17th Avenue SW, then to Lindstrom Drive SW, and to my sister Diane’s home south of Calgary, near Nanton, Alberta. In the 1980s it was shipped back east to Ottawa where I had made my home.

Growing up in Calgary, piano lessons were an integral part of a child’s upbringing for all the cousins in our generation. Many of us learned our musical chops on “Auntie Ada’s piano” but I don’t think any of us approached the proficiency of Auntie Ada herself.

After a hundred years Uncle Roy's piano still holds a tune, and the Ottawa Piano Mover company will find it a new home. I hope its new family enjoys the piano as much as our family has over the decades.